


Her Heart a River, Her Heart the Heavens

by papayascents



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous endings, Asian Character(s), F/F, Fantasy, Food, Hunger & Greed, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Leaving Home, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Promises, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:26:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25678060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papayascents/pseuds/papayascents
Summary: "When the harvest moon came, Nhung realized with the slowness of a half-forgotten dream revealing itself that she had come to love this snake girl."A fearless ferry saves a snake's life, and in return, the snake gifts her with a hunger that can't be satisfied.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Her Heart a River, Her Heart the Heavens

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for Bloodlust, a charity anthology about wlw shapeshifters.

In the old days, when the line between human and beast was thinner and thunder signified war between the gods of the Bloodstone Dais, giant snakes ruled the estuaries. Their cousins the dragons brooked no trespass on their ocean domain. Therefore the snakes claimed the estuaries, that liminal space where freshwater and saltwater mixed and created a world that united rivers and oceans and yet stood separate from them.

These snakes were ferocious hunters whose limitless hunger drove them to devour anything from fish to humans. The last thing their prey saw was the gleam of white fangs and the rainbow glitter of the jewels adorning their backs.

The most notorious of their estuaries lay at the end of the Fox’s Tail, a river so named because its currents and whirlpools could drag an inexperienced swimmer to their death. Crossing by boat was a dangerous affair as well, for many had met their end when their boat struck a hidden rock and splintered, throwing them into the water. And of course, even if one was lucky enough to be carried out to the estuary’s calmer waters, one would only fall prey to the snakes. 

However, the river divided the pious temples of the north from the raucous cities of the south, and many travelers crossed it daily: ascetics retreating from material life as well as aristocrats going home to another round of revelry after purifying themselves before the gods. Luckily for these travelers, a small but lively village thrived next to the Fox’s Tail, and the heart of its survival were the daring young people who made a living ferrying travelers back and forth across the river. 

Among these ferries was a young woman named Nhung. She could always be seen by the riverside in her conical straw hat, shouting tall tales to potential customers about how last week so-and-so had crashed their boat into the rocks, or seen a snake and been so frightened that they threw one of their customers overboard to be eaten.

None of them would do such a thing, of course—no one survived for long as a ferry unless they possessed a heart as firm as packed earth and knew the Fox’s Tail as well as they knew the scent of their mother’s cooking.

Even among such exceptional people, Nhung stood out. Her mother was a ferry before her, and Nhung had grown up sitting on her boat, rocked to sleep by the crash of the water and shuddering of the boards. The other ferries were brave, but they still treated the Fox’s Tail with wary respect. Nhung, on the other hand, loved the water twice as much as others feared it. For that reason she alone dared to go as far as the estuary.

She went because her mother had taken her there when she was young and she had fallen in love with the salty air and the life that abounded, from the elegant cranes to the dozens of shining, flitting fish just under the surface.

Her mother had also taught her to watch for the rainbow glimmer of an approaching snake, and several times Nhung had seen them and only barely rowed herself to safety. Whenever she looked back, she could see the top of a snake’s head emerging from the water, its smooth scales glistening as it watched her leave. Those were the only times Nhung knew fear when she was on the water, and curiously enough, it excited her.

One day, while she was enjoying a moment of idleness and respite from the din of customers, she caught a rainbow glimmer in the corner of her eye. She snatched up her rowing pole, then noticed something odd: the glimmer remained constant, as if the snake it heralded was not moving towards her but staying in place. It was possible that the snake had not seen her, but snakes were always moving unless they were asleep or dead. Nhung knew that it was foolish but her curiosity won and she rowed closer, watching all the while for sudden movement.

The light came from a copse of reeds, and when Nhung drew to the edge of it, she saw something unexpected: a snake twined among the reeds and bleeding copiously from wounds. Despite her weakened state, she made a fearsome sight. Easily twelve feet long, her scales were the black of a moonless night. A constellation of precious gems, more profuse and brilliant than any other snake that Nhung had seen, adorned the length of her.

When she sensed Nhung’s presence, the snake raised her head and hissed in warning: “Do not mistake me for easy prey, human. If you wish to steal these jewels, you must fight for them.”

Nhung knew of people who poached jewels from the carcasses of snakes and sold them for a high price; some even boasted that they had killed the snakes themselves, though it was only a tale designed to entice the foolish into paying higher prices. If she managed to subdue this snake, she would be rich enough to never have to work again.

But seeing such a wild and fierce thing broken bred only pity in her heart. Knowing it was foolish, she said, “I have no wish to mangle your body. If you will allow me, however, I will help you.”

The snake’s tongue flickered out and a sound like the rattling of fortune-telling seashells surrounded Nhung. She realized that the snake was laughing.

“What can you do, you small human? Once the other snakes smell my blood in the water, they will come for me and devour you as well.”

Cold fear gripped Nhung’s heart. But she was still determined, for the snake’s derision was a challenge and she had never been afraid of one.

“You think too lowly of humans. Will you accept my help, or will you let pride be the death of you?”

The snake regarded her with fathomless eyes. At last she said, “I will accept your help, human. If you somehow succeed, then I will owe you a life debt.”

Nhung could not go back on her word now. She bade the snake coil herself around the stern of her boat and rowed as quickly as she could out of the estuary, keenly aware of the blood that trailed behind them. She could feel the snake’s presence behind her back the whole while. She shivered upon thinking that even injured as she was, she could easily rear forward and tear her throat out.

But the snake remained still until they reached the Fox’s Tail. Nhung pushed her boat ashore and the snake rested on the riverbank as Nhung treated her wounds with a mixture of mud and wild herbs. This too her mother had taught her; it was a useful skill when so many accidents befell the ferries, including herself. She did not know if they would be as useful for a snake, but the bleeding stopped and eventually the tension in the snake’s body eased.

The snake watched unblinking the entire time, as if daring her to be afraid and leave her task unfinished.

“You’re a curious human,” she said when Nhung had finished. “But you did indeed save me, so now I owe you a life debt. My name is Huynh. If you are ever in need, you may call for me and I will come.”

With that, she slithered into the jungle’s underbrush and Nhung was left standing on the shore alone, in awe that she had met a snake and lived.

Days passed by, and then weeks. At night, Nhung dreamed about scales and jewels and a quiet, coiled danger at her back. When she woke, it was with her heart stirred from more than just the danger. It unsettled her, for her whole life was built on familiarity. Even the beloved Fox’s Tail was familiar to her. Though it changed daily, she could always predict the direction and timing of its moods. These new dreams, on the other hand, were incomprehensible.

Nhung used to take comfort in familiarity, but in the days after meeting Huynh she grew moody and discontent. For the first time, life seemed stifling. Even the jokes the ferries called out amongst each other sounded like a script they had rehearsed many times before. She longed for the estuary but was afraid to go near it, for she did not know what would happen if she did.

Eventually she resolved to put the matter behind her. She would never call the snake girl Huynh, for the village was her home and the work of ferrying her anchor. If she was too afraid to leave them behind then there was no use in longing for something else. She traded stories and jokes with the other ferries once more, and whenever her thoughts drifted to the sheen of water on scales she smiled at the noblewomen who sat in her boat, sweet and proper and no danger at all.

So the months passed. Nhung had almost forgotten about the snake girl until one day near nightfall there came a knock on her door. Nhung answered and there on her doorstep, framed by the deepening purple of the sky and wearing an ao tu than of iridescent black, stood a beautiful young woman.

Her hair, as black and shining as her clothes, fell down to her waist; her skin was a lovely brown as smooth and unmarked as a noblewoman’s. There was a strangeness about her face though. Perhaps because it was narrow and her eyes such a deep black, there was a look of hunger in it. It was not the hunger of one who starved, but of one who was never satisfied.

Even before she spoke, Nhung knew who stood before her.

“You never called for me,” the snake girl Huynh said. “I like to repay my debts quickly, you know. Or have you forgotten about me?”

Nhung stood there tongue tied. Snakes were sometimes known to take on human form and marry humans, but they did not do so for love or mischief like other beasts. They did so to hunt, and any human who unwittingly married a snake could expect to live no further than the wedding night.

Huynh narrowed her eyes. “You have forgotten me, haven’t you? You’re really a curious human. Well, I won’t have this debt hanging over my head forever. From now on I’ll stay by your side until I find a way to repay you, and then I’ll be done with it all.”

As much as Nhung protested that there was no need to repay the debt, Huynh would not listen. She made herself comfortable by Nhung’s fire, and Nhung despaired of how she would explain the sudden appearance of this strange and beautiful girl to her neighbors.

At first there were whispers, but soon the sight of Huynh trailing after Nhung became commonplace. After one of the village women asked her how she had woven her au tu than so beautifully, she could also be seen weaving with the housewives, lamenting always that the cloth was not as beautiful as that found in her hometown.

“Saying things like that makes people think you’re strange,” Nhung told her one night as they ate dinner.

As usual, Huynh eschewed chopsticks and rice bowl and elected to tear raw fish apart with her hands and suck the bones clean with avidity. There were things about her snake self that she could disguise, and things that stuck to her like river mud under one’s fingernails.

“Let them,” she said. “They don’t suspect anything. Besides, they think _you’re_ strange.”

“Me? Why would they think that? I’ve lived here all my life, and I’m as ordinary as them.”

Huynh looked up from her food. Her eyes, as black and fathomless as the first day that they had met, bored into Nhung. “Are you? Do you see any other woman your age unmarried, living by herself with no family and never showing any inkling of interest in men?”

Nhung’s face burned. It was true that only other women caught her eye. She had known since she was young that marriage with a man was impossible. “There are other women like me,” she argued. “Even if not in this village, then elsewhere.”

Huynh dug out the fish’s eye and popped it into her mouth. “True enough. I have sisters and cousins who have gone as far south as the capital and as far north as the temples. There are women like you, but still—not quite like you.”

Nhung felt unsettled, like she had when she had dreamed about Huynh and realized that she was beautiful. “How am I different?” she demanded.

Huynh smiled, and for a moment Nhung saw a snake’s mouth. “Well, to start with, I don’t think any of them would have saved a snake’s life.”

Her words burrowed under Nhung’s skin even though there was no hidden meaning in them. Snakes were not liars like birds or tricksters like foxes. They conquered with strength and therefore had no need for sophistry. Yet Nhung was still bothered and could not help but notice how the older women clucked their tongues over how she was yet unmarried, and the men either disliked her or treated her with a bemused benevolence like she was a child whose whimsies needed to be humored.

It was also true that she was alone, for one by the one the girls that she had played with in her childhood had married and become respectable young women who gossiped with each other in the market and showed their children off to doting relatives. They smiled and chatted with her when they met by chance, but there was always a look of pity in their eyes, as if she had fallen behind the rest of them.

It made the discontent rise in Nhung again, and Huynh noticed.

“We should go south to the cities,” she told Nhung. “As you said, there are women like you there and many of them are rich. I’m sure they would fall over themselves to have someone as handsome and rugged as you.”

Nhung scowled. “Don’t tease me. Besides, what’s this ‘we’? You can’t just follow me everywhere.”

“I’ll only follow you until I’ve repaid the debt. There are many dangers on the way to the south, so maybe I’ll find a chance to save your life like that.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere!”

“Not even for a rich and beautiful noblewoman who will lavish money and affection on you?”

“No rich and beautiful noblewoman is going to do that.”

“Well, never mind then. I’m sure there’s a lovely country girl somewhere who will settle down with you until you’re both old.”

Her words raised a sudden curiosity in Nhung. “Do snakes marry?”

“We don’t find it as necessary as you humans, and we certainly don’t make such a ritual out of it. But if we were to find someone that we wanted to share our meals and our riverbed with, we would simply ask. Of course, snakes are quite territorial and selfish so it’s easier said than done.”

“Have you found someone like that? No, never mind. If you had, you wouldn’t be here bothering me.”

This time it was Huynh’s turn to scowl. Nhung laughed, pleased and surprised that teasing had an effect on her after all. It was only after she had placated Huynh with the promise of more fish that she realized she had not even thought to be afraid of raising a snake’s ire.

Days turned into weeks, and then into months. Nhung began to forget why Huynh had come to her in the first place. Huynh seemed to forget as well. Though she still followed Nhung around, she stayed at home just as often. She had no skill for cleaning or cooking, but she wove new clothes for Nhung and herself, as well as sets to sell to passing merchants.

Strangely enough, she was most like her snake self when she sewed: the hunger on her face grew sharper and her hands were the whip-like blur of a snake’s tail as she threaded the needle in and out.

When the harvest moon came, Nhung realized with the slowness of a half-forgotten dream revealing itself that she had come to love this snake girl. It was not a delusion brought on by her human disguise. Although she grew used to the sight of Huynh as a human girl, she only needed to close her eyes to remember her as she truly was. She knew that Huynh was still dangerous, but she did not wish to tame her. She was simply not afraid, not even when she noticed that the constant hunger in Huynh’s gaze was directed at her more and more often.

Perhaps it was because she had begun to understand that hunger had many different forms, and every living thing felt it. She, too, was hungry: for the wild and tumbling waters of the Fox’s River; the quiet danger of the estuary; the cyclical triumph of conquering fears and escaping danger.

And she was hungry for Huynh—for her predator’s nature and her pride, and for the fortune-telling rattle of her laughter as she sat next to the fire and listened to Huynh’s stories.

It was hunger that made her finally take Huynh’s face in her hands one night and kiss her. Huynh was cool to the touch everywhere, but she reciprocated with warmth, pulling Nhung in by the shirt and licking her way into her mouth.

When they pulled apart at last, Huynh said, “Know this: I am no rich noblewoman or simple country girl. What comes of this union, if it is to be one, will not be easy.”

“Nothing has ever been easy for women like us,” Nhung said. “It does not change how I feel.”

Huynh held Nhung’s face in her hands. Her fingers were strong and cold against Nhung’s heated skin. “Then tell me how I should come to you now.”

Nhung saw the same challenge in her eyes as when they first met. This time, she answered it directly: “Come to me as you truly are, and know that I am unafraid.”

In the flickering firelight, Huynh was a sinuous shadow. The jewels on her back caught the light and refracted it. It reminded Nhung of how snakes always looked in the water as they hunted, but there was no water here, only the solid ground beneath Nhung’s sleeping mat and the weight of Huynh as she coiled herself between her legs and around her waist.

She seemed to take pleasure in embracing Nhung like that; she hissed softly and flickered her tongue over Nhung’s skin, tasting every part of her with a delicate touch that made Nhung long for more. She wrapped her legs around Huynh’s wide girth and rocked up against her until the ache was too much to bear and she brought herself to release with her fingers. Huynh squeezed around her at the same time, one breathless moment of power, and then shuddered and let her go.

From then on, Nhung and Huynh lived together as wives. Nhung ferried and Huynh sewed her beautiful clothes, and sometimes when the afternoons were slow they went to the estuary together. There Huynh would coax Nhung into the water for a swim: Huynh as her snake self and Nhung with all her skin bared so she could feel the brush of Huynh’s scales as the snake girl entangled their bodies.

If the other villagers noticed this newfound union, they did not mention it. But Nhung could feel a shift in the way they looked at her. The older women were more disapproving and the men more hostile. Even the young women stopped talking to her, instead averting their eyes and hurrying away when they saw her, especially if she was with Huynh.

Their ostracizing stung, but ever since Huynh’s arrival Nhung had felt more and more that she had always lived apart from these people. Sometimes she wondered if she had swallowed some of the Fox’s Tail as a child, and that was why her heart seemed a raging river next to the placid ponds of her neighbors’.

It should not have come as a surprise that if she felt discontent, then Huynh felt it more acutely. Sometimes when she wove by the fireside, Nhung could see the snake coiled inside of her, ready to tear through the fragile paper of her human skin. She began spending more time at the estuary alone. There were nights when she left their bed and came back in the gray hours of the morning, colder than usual and smelling of blood.

She was too prideful to admit that she struggled, but Nhung could see the hunger growing inside her. Then one morning a drunkard returning from his revelry saw Huynh coming back from the estuary. Though she was wearing her human skin, it had grown ever thinner from constraining the snake within and the drunkard caught a glimpse.

Everyone dismissed his ravings as that of inebriation, but from then on the housewives no longer invited her to weave with them, and where the villagers had been circumspect before they now erupted into whispers whenever Huynh or Nhung drew near.

One night, Nhung asked Huynh, “You asked me once if I wanted to travel south with you. Shall we do so and leave this village behind?”

Huynh did not answer at first. She was embroidering the final details onto a silk coat. It was the most wondrous work she had done yet. The birds burst from the reeds with so much life-like vigor that they seemed ready to fly off the back of the coat. When she finished, she held the coat up and stared at it, her gaze faraway.

“Do you know why snakes shed our skins?” she asked.

Nhung frowned, unsure what this had to do with her question. “No.”

“It is because Nguyet, the god of wild things, fashioned the first snake from nothing but mud. Discontent with how plain she looked, the snake tore off the jewels hemmed onto the god’s robes and swallowed them whole.

“Of course, she soon found herself in pain, for the jewels contained some of the god’s power and the snake was too small a vessel to hold it. In desperation, she began to devour everything in sight, growing larger and larger until she shed her old skin for a new one. She did this again and again, until finally the pain eased.

“But a snake is no god, and no matter how large she grew, the pain did not stop. Still, she refused to part from the jewels, for if she did she would be plain and small once more. So she passed them down to all of us, her daughters and granddaughters, and each of us continues to devour and to shed our skins, hoping that one day we will shed the pain as well and live at last in a body glorious enough to hold a god’s power.”

Huynh stood up at the end of her tale, and Nhung watched with a heavy heart as she shed her human skin for the last time. It crumpled to the ground, worn beyond repair, and Nhung knew that she would never ask her to put it on again.

“You know as well as I that there is no village or city that will hold us,” Huynh said. “But I still owe you a life debt. If you ask me to follow you, I will.”

Nhung shook her head. “Wait a little longer to repay your debt. You followed me once already, so now it is my turn to follow you.”

None can say with certainty what unfolded next. Some say the snake girl Huynh wove a new skin for Nhung, so her wife could swim disguised in the water as she had once walked disguised on land. Others say the god of wild things, who was soft of heart, took pity on the two and parted with another jewel from her robes so that the transformation could be true. But all agree that after that day, none in the village ever saw Nhung or Huynh again.

*

Everything in life ended. Mothers died, friends took different paths in life, and even the Fox’s Tail eventually emptied into the estuary. At least, that was what Nhung, the snake who had once been a human, had believed.

But beyond the estuary was the ocean, something so vast that no one knew the end of it. And even if that had its end, surely there was something beyond it as well: something finally limitless enough to hold a hunger so great that it had swallowed a god’s power.

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same universe as ["From Under the Peach Tree"](https://firesidefiction.com/from-under-the-peach-tree), a flash fiction featuring Nguyet, the god of wild things.
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/ninetalesk)


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